“He climbed out of the window of his apartment last thursday and he hasn’t contacted anybody since then, or no one has heard from him, no one that I know.”
“He climbed through the window?”
“He always left his apartment that way.” Seeing the confused look on his face I elaborated; “He was afraid of his neighbors.”
“I see.”
He didn’t but that was okay with me.

:::

His son once told me he believed his father could read minds until he was twenty eight years old. 

:::

“Why did you change your mind?”
“By then it seemed he had either lost the ability, or more likely he had given it up.”

:::

His paintings first started appearing in the late nineteen fifties inside the dust jackets of his favorite novels. He traveled around the country, in boxcars, stopping in small towns and cities, visiting bookstores and doing his work. In nineteen fifty-nine he was arrested in a bookstore in Northern California, in March. He had been painting a scene inside the cover of Don Quixote, I wish it were a different book. He was arrested because by that time he had “defaced” over two thousand books. Most of them by Jack London.

:::

“He cannot read.”
“Not at all?”
“No, not at all.”
“How can yo be sure?”
“He cannot read.”
“But, how can you know? Has he told you this?”
“He cannot read.”

:::

July 14
Two months after detectives interviewed me about D’Lane’s disappearing a small article ran in the paper today. “Eccentric Artist’s Disappearing Act.” No one even called me. Fuck it all.
July 16
I ran into that shitty crime reporter who wrote the article in a bar on Michigan Ave last night. I told him I was going to kick his ass. He said who the fuck do you think you are? I told him I was Thomas D’Lane’s biographer and if he was going to go around writing shitty half-assed articles like that he could suck my cock. I was drunk. I was trying to impress a girl who had left fifteen minutes before the argument even started. I had forgotten. If I am completely honest with myself he kicked my ass.

:::

“He’s been spotted.”
“Where?”
“Canada. Mexico City. I think he is in the Ukraine.”
“Why?”
“He told me.”
“You talked to him?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Last night, as I fell asleep.”
“You had a dream?”
“He spoke to me.”
“Fuck.”